Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Blood in West Brumfield v. McCoy by Brandon Kirk William Greenville “Green” McCoy. Are you adding a grave photo that will fulfill this request? Yes, fulfill request No, this is not a grave photo. Oops, something didn't work. Close this window, and upload the photo(s) again. Make sure that the file is a photo. Photos larger than 8Mb will be reduced. Photos larger than 8.0 MB will be optimized and reduced. Each contributor can upload a maximum of 5 photos for a memorial. A memorial can have a maximum of 20 photos from all contributors. The sponsor of a memorial may add an additional 10 photos (for a total of 30 on the memorial). Include gps location with grave photos where possible. No animated GIFs, photos with additional graphics (borders, embellishments.) No post-mortem photos. File Name · Request Grave Photo. Photo request failed. Try again later. The note field is required. Leave a Flower. Your Scrapbook is currently empty. Add to your scrapbook. 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We have 2 volunteers within ten miles of your requested photo location. Also an additional volunteer within fifty miles. Also an additional 2 volunteers within fifty miles. GREAT NEWS! We have a volunteer within fifty miles of your requested photo location. GREAT NEWS! We have 2 volunteers within fifty miles of your requested photo location. Sorry! We do not have any photo volunteers within fifty miles of your requested photo location. You can still file a request but no one will be notified. If a new volunteer signs up in your requested photo location, they may see your existing request and take the photo. Review: Blood in WV by Brandon R. Kirk. Back in the 1990’s when I was leaving home, wanting to erase my history and blaze new trails, another person from my hometown, Brandon Kirk, was digging deep in the soil that grew us, undertaking an extensive project exploring our town’s history. There’s a meta-story here, but I’ll let him tell it in his own time (maybe). In his first book, Blood in : Brumfield versus McCoy (Pelican Publishing, 2014), Brandon Kirk takes the reader back in time and deep in the hollows of our hometown, Harts, West Virginia. The [unincorporated] town where we grew up is situated in Central Appalachia in the southern section of Lincoln County. In addition to being a distant cousin, Brandon is a good friend to our family, particularly my step-dad, Billy Adkins, who is himself an expert on local history. It was enjoyable reading this book featuring so many characters I’d heard about over the years. Brandon Kirk selling his book at an event at Chief Logan State Park. [Photo courtesy of Brandon Kirk] Harts rests on the edge of the coalfields, but this true crime drama is set against the backdrop of the timber boom of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Kirk provides an exhaustive account of the feud involving the Brumfields, a family who helped settle the region. Written in the vernacular of the time, the book is divided into three sections. [SPOILERS AHEAD] In the first section Kirk introduces the readers to Green McCoy and Milt Haley, key figures in the feud who allegedly were hired to kill prominent businessman Al Brumfield and his well-connected wife, Hollena (Dingess) Brumfield. Unlike many simplistic feud accounts of one family against another (think Hatfield versus McCoy), Kirk shows that the violence in the Harts area was the result of complex social relations and tensions surrounding the timber boom. Hollena Dingess in late life. [Photo courtesy of Brandon Kirk] The second section details the aftermath of the shooting of Al and Hollena Brumfield and ends with the capture of Haley and McCoy. Kirk shows how the shooting was portrayed in the national media. Undoubtedly pulling on interviews, Kirk imagines the trail of McCoy and Haley as they traveled around in eastern Kentucky, awaiting their next move. While waiting to hear word from Harts, they are captured and given up to the law enforcement in Inez, Kentucky. The third section of the book relies heavily on newspaper reports of the killings of McCoy and Haley and the aftermath. Kirk highlights contradictory reports and how national newspapers tended to sensationalize the events—as if they weren’t bad enough. It seems that because Green McCoy shared the last name of another famous feuding family in the region, reporters were overzealous in assuming that the McCoy family was also feuding with the Brumfields of Lincoln county. Dingess homestead where Hollene Brumfield was taken after being shot. [Courtesy of Brandon Kirk] Kirk draws on a rich collection of interviews he collected over the years. Indeed, the most impressive part of his book, in many ways, is the bibliography of primary sources—hundreds of interviews with people in the community who had knowledge of the feud. Kirk spends a considerable amount of time pouring over old newspapers, the content of which he often records on his blog. Blood in West Virginia is a worthwhile study for anyone interested in feuds, Appalachian history, studies in violence, and musical history (McCoy and Haley were fiddlers). It would be an excellent choice for a graduate course on Appalachian history or culture. Serious students of the Appalachian region will appreciate Kirk’s nuanced account of the violence and feuding that took place in the late 19 th century in rural West Virginia. John W “Frock” Adams. Married (1) Lucinda Curry, daughter of Jesse and Emily (Cartwright) Curry. Married (2) Elizabeth Mullins, daughter of Robert and Almeda (Mullins) Mullins. ∼ Son of John Q. and Chloe (Gore) Adams. John Frock was a participant in the Lincoln County Feud. For more information, see Brandon Kirk's book "Blood in West Virginia: Brumfield v. McCoy" (2014). Son of John Quincy and Chloe Ann (Gore) Adams. Married (1) Lucinda Curry, daughter of Jesse and Emily (Cartwright) Curry.

Married (2) Elizabeth Mullins, daughter of Robert and Almeda (Mullins) Mullins. ∼ Son of John Q. and Chloe (Gore) Adams. John Frock was a participant in the Lincoln County Feud. For more information, see Brandon Kirk's book "Blood in West Virginia: Brumfield v. McCoy" (2014). Family Members. John Quincy Adams. Chloe Ann Gore Mullins. Elizabeth Mullins Adams. Joseph Adams. George Washington Adams. Peter Mullins. Henry Weddington Mullins. Anthony Adams. Sherman Adams. Jessie J. Adams. Beecher Adams. Flowers. Sponsored by Ancestry. See more Adams memorials in: Created by: ILeighty Added: 20 Oct 2016 Find a Grave Memorial 171592507 Source Hide citation. Add Photos for John W “Frock” Adams. Fulfill Photo Request for John W “Frock” Adams. Photo Request Fulfilled. Thank you for fulfilling this photo request. An email has been sent to the person who requested the photo informing them that you have fulfilled their request. There is an open photo request for this memorial. 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Save to an Ancestry Tree, a virtual cemetery, your clipboard for pasting or Print. Edit or Suggest Edit. Edit a memorial you manage or suggest changes to the memorial manager. Have Feedback. Thanks for using Find a Grave, if you have any feedback we would love to hear from you. Previous Dismiss Replay. 2 photos picked. You may not upload any more photos to this memorial. "Unsupported file type" This photo was not uploaded because this memorial already has 20 photos. This photo was not uploaded because you have already uploaded 5 photos to this memorial. This photo was not uploaded because this memorial already has 30 photos. This photo was not uploaded because you have already uploaded 20 photos to this memorial. Invalid File Type. Uploading 1 Photo. Uploading 2 Photos. 1 Photo Uploaded. 2 Photos Uploaded. GREAT NEWS! We have a volunteer within ten miles of your requested photo location. GREAT NEWS! We have 2 volunteers within ten miles of your requested photo location. Also an additional volunteer within fifty miles. Also an additional 2 volunteers within fifty miles. GREAT NEWS! We have a volunteer within fifty miles of your requested photo location. GREAT NEWS! We have 2 volunteers within fifty miles of your requested photo location. Sorry! We do not have any photo volunteers within fifty miles of your requested photo location. You can still file a request but no one will be notified. If a new volunteer signs up in your requested photo location, they may see your existing request and take the photo. Author to sign new book at Empire on Saturday. Click #isupportlocal for more information on supporting our local journalists. Learn more about HD Media. Marshall University graduate Brandon Kirk, an assistant professor of American history at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College, will be signing copies of the book, "Blood in West Virginia: Brumfield v. McCoy," from 1 to 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 12 at Empire Books and News at Pullman Square. Courtesy of Brandon Kirk. Marshall University graduate Brandon Kirk, an assistant professor of American history at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College, will be signing copies of the book, "Blood in West Virginia: Brumfield v. McCoy," from 1 to 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 12 at Empire Books and News at Pullman Square. Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Save. HUNTINGTON - There will be a massive feud at Chilifest on Saturday. No worries, the fighting is going to be inside at Empire Books and News, and this feud will boil up only between the pages of Brandon Kirk's lively new local history book, "Blood in West Virginia: Brumfield v. McCoy." Kirk, an assistant professor of American history at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College, will be signing copies of the book from 1 to 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 12 during the height of Chilifest. Kirk, a Marshall University graduate and Harts, West Virginia, native will also be signing copies at 10 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 19 over at the Ed Haley Contest, at the Christian Life Center, 1628 Winchester Ave., Ashland, as well as at the Hometown Hamlin event at 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 19. A descendent of feudists from Lincoln County, Kirk spent 20 years researching the book which lays out the bloody feud that during its hey-day, between September 1889 and May 1890, commanded headlines in newspapers all over the country. The book splays open the Lincoln County feud, one of the most sensational events that occurred in the Southern Appalachian Mountains prior to 1900. Arising out of personal grievances between two prominent residents (Paris Brumfield and Cain Adkins) in Harts, which he describes as back then a rough-and-tumble West Virginia timber town, it quickly escalated into a struggle for supremacy between business competitors and political rivals. With more than 20 photographs, the book thoroughly documents the saga of a community and its residents in turmoil as the timber boom transformed modest farmers into businessmen out for wealth and blood. Kirk's book tracks the rise of enterprising timber merchant Al Brumfield whose hard-edged business attitude, as well as his father's long-time quarrel with a neighbor, had garnered him numerous enemies. In September of 1889, someone ambushed and attempted to murder Brumfield and his wife. The Brumfields and their allies stopped at nothing to find the men responsible. Two local men, Milt Haley and Green McCoy, surfaced as the prime suspects. A Brumfield-led gang captured Haley and McCoy and brutally murdered them. The violence was just beginning as these larger-than-life characters are caught up in vicious acts stoked by personal grievances and economic and social change, Kirk explains. While Kirk based a lot of his research on county records, local and national newspapers, he also utilized a number of oral history interviews including some he conducted himself back in the 1990s. "When I was young and pretty much finishing high school and coming to Marshall I became very interested in family history, and in elderly people and their stories," Kirk said. "I had always loved history but I thought it was just in books. I discovered in high school through a project we did where we would bring in elderly folks in and veterans to come in and talk about their lives, that these elderly people are like history books and the history they give is something totally different from the things I had read. That really clicked with me. I would come home from Marshall and visit the elderly people in my family and then I would branch out and meet more people of an advanced age and so it started out with a sort of an interest in family history and that quickly became local history and then I kept hearing about all of these old crimes in our community and a lot of these old killings." Kirk saw a story in Goldenseal about this particular feud and about a song written about the feud and wound up doing a lot of research through the State Archives. Kirk, who spoke at the Archives Library series earlier this summer, said it was great to be able to thank those folks who all of their work helping him research the subject. Kirk said when he first began researching the subject some of his friends found it odd. He feels like the journey paid off in the end result, as well as the friends made along the way. "I would say the elderly people inspired me to want to know more and they became good friends," Kirk said. "When I was down here I had a girlfriend at Marshall and my friends in the fraternity, they couldn't figure out why I was always going home on the weekend. When you are in your 20s most people are concerned with other things but those old people got a grip on me. Those people are listed in the book as sources but they were all friends and most of them are gone now. " Interestingly, one of the folks who now is gone that he met along the way, helped change his course a bit, and got him working on a side project that he hopes will be published within the year. That person, whom Kirk met back in the early 1990s was the late, great famous Americana musician who was in the area off and on researching Ed Haley. "Ed Haley's father was in the feud that I was researching and we began to cross paths and started writing each other and calling one another and when we finally met we really hit it off and John and I worked together up until his death in 2001," Kirk said. Kirk moved to Nashville from the mid 1990s to 2001 to help Hartford with the book project about Ed Haley. Kirk hopes to have that book (as well as a companion box set and music book) out within the next year. "Our research involved not only Ed's life but also the feud as well, and I give him a lot of credit," Kirk said. "He supported me and encouraged me to research and write. He knew that small town history was powerful and he knew not to think of it as a being a local interest story only. He couldn't get enough of it." Hartford's inclination was right and in 2000 Smithsonian magazine did a story on them when there was a grave excavation of two of the feudists who were killed. Kirk said the story unearthed an amazing, vibrant and volatile time in our history. "We researched a lot of the timber boom when people were coming in and that was exciting to learn about timbering and there was a lot of music and a lot of characters," Kirk said. "It was Victorian America and people were trying to seize the initiative of business and opportunity in that era of the Rockefellers and Carnegies it was happening on a smaller scale and I got pulled in." Kirk, who finally got the book written last year, said it took two years to boil down the massive amount of multi-sourced research and to work the narrative. "I researched it about 20 years and most of my sources had passed and I felt like I really couldn't learn a lot of new things. So I felt like it was time to draw conclusions and figure out how to write the story," Kirk said. "So I decided using the scholars approach to the research but lean toward a more literary style. My model for the book was Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood," that had two characters essential to the narrative and so did this story to me." Kirk, who has written more than 50 Appalachian-themed articles for regional newspapers and books, said he feels like a modern day Fred Lambert, trying to keep alive the history of the area and present it to a new generation for discussion and education. "My goal is to collect, preserve and promote the history and culture in my part of Appalachia which includes the Lower basin," Kirk said. "I love Huntington history and love Guyandotte, the old town. I go down there and walk across that bridge at the mouth of the Guyandotte and picture those logs coming down bobbing down to the Ohio." Hatfield-McCoy Reunion Festival at Matewan, WV (2018) On June 15-16, 2018, the town of Matewan, WV, hosted the Hatfield-McCoy Reunion Festival. Matewan Depot hosted us for a book event. THANK YOU, Matewan Depot! Matewan Depot is a must-see destination! NOTE: For more information about the town and depot, please follow this link: http://www.historicmatewan.com/ Here is a photo of our revamped Lincoln County Feud display at the Hatfield-McCoy Reunion Festival. Green McCoy, a Pike County (Ky.) McCoy, participated in the Lincoln feud; Bob Hatfield, son of Anse, married Louisa Mullins, a Lincoln feudist. 15 June 2018. Green McCoy’s great-niece Lisha Breeding made my day when she visited the Lincoln County Feud exhibit. 16 June 2018. Photo by Mom. We met nice people and sold copies of the book at the Hatfield-McCoy Reunion Festival. All proceeds were donated to the depot, which I greatly SUPPORT — it’s a significant asset that promotes regional history and tourism. 16 June 2018. Photo by Randy Marcum. The Matewan Depot features a free museum. The museum offers historical items related to town history, the Hatfield-McCoy Feud, the Norfolk & Southern Railroad, and the Mine Wars. 15 June 2018. Sid Hatfield gun with accompanying documentation. 15 June 2018. The West Virginia Division of Culture and History showcased a Hatfield-McCoy exhibit at the Hatfield-McCoy Reunion Festival. 16 June 2018. Some of the many artifacts located inside of the Matewan Depot. 16 June 2018. The depot features a worthy selection of books and other items related to regional history and culture. This photo shows a sample of books: t- shirts, stickers, videos, art, and many other items can also be found here. If you visit, be sure to take a peak at my book, “Blood in West Virginia: Brumfield v. McCoy.” May 2018. Douglas Branch (2017) 26 Thursday Oct 2017. Tags. Douglas Branch, located in present-day Ferrellsburg, Lincoln County, WV, was named for Jacob Douglas, husband of Sallie Fry, who settled in the area by 1829-30 from Giles County, Virginia. Mr. Douglas, born about 1804, appears in the 1830 Logan County Census. In 1850, he lived in Boone County. He died in 1855 in Gilmer County. Enos “Jake” and Leticia “Lettie” McKibbon (Toney) Adkins were early residents of Douglas Branch. Following the Haley-McCoy murders at the mouth of Green Shoal in 1889, Al Brumfield rode up this hollow and spent the night under a beech tree. In the early 1920s, my great-great- grandfather Emery Mullins just up this hollow and to the left. Emma Jane (Hager) Adkins was the daughter of Philip and Elizabeth Jane (Dalton) Hager. On July 14, 1888, she married Albert G. Adkins, a son of Jake and Lettie Adkins. Adkins-Davis Family Cemetery, Douglas Branch, Lincoln County, WV. 21 October 2017. Photo by Mom. Walker Branch (2016) 09 Thursday Mar 2017. Tags. Walker Branch is a tributary of the Guyandotte River located in Ferrellsburg, Lincoln County, WV. Photo taken 27 November 2016. Walker Branch is named for Benjamin Wade Walker (1851-1917), a United Baptist preacher who once lived along the stream. Photo taken 27 November 2016. Walker Branch appears in early deeds as Allen Adkins Branch. Photo taken 27 November 2016. In October of 1889, Ben Walker and Melvin Kirk brought the corpses of Haley and McCoy from Green Shoal to West Fork via Walker Branch and through Low Gap. Photo taken 27 November 2016. Faye Smith (2015) 20 Saturday Jun 2015. Tags. Here I am during a recent visit with my friend Faye Smith, the granddaughter of Spicie (Adkins) McCoy-Fry. Sherman B. McCoy grave (2014) 06 Wednesday May 2015. Tags. Sherman Boyd McCoy grave, located at Community Memorial Gardens, Armilda, Wayne County, WV, 26 October 2014. Haley-McCoy grave (2015) 29 Sunday Mar 2015. Tags. Haley-McCoy grave, located on West Fork of Harts Creek, Lincoln County, WV. In 2000, Smithsonian magazine featured the grave (and myself) in a story written by Edwards Park. Photo taken 27 March 2015. Haley-McCoy grave, located on West Fork of Harts Creek, Lincoln County, WV. In 2000, Smithsonian magazine featured the grave (and myself) in a story written by Edwards Park. Photo taken 27 March 2015. Haley-McCoy grave (2015) 29 Sunday Mar 2015. Tags. Here I stand on 27 March 2015 at the Haley-McCoy grave on West Fork of Harts Creek, Lincoln County, WV. I first saw the grave in 1995. John’s epilogue 2. 31 Sunday Aug 2014. Tags. When Ed first went out into the neighborhood with his dad’s fiddle and armed with his melodies (as interpreted by his mother) I think he probably caused not a small sensation amongst family and neighbors and his ear being as great as it was I think he picked up an incredible amount of other music really fast. I think he played with a lot of ornaments when he was a teenager and up into maybe even his thirties. Snake Chapman and Ugee Postalwait have alluded to this. Snake said the dining room recordings just didn’t sound as old-timey as he remembered Ed playing and Ugee said she remembered him and her dad talking about the little melodies between the notes. Of course Ed had to have been through a lot of subtle changes in style since that time. I think in later years he stripped a lot of the ornaments out of his fiddling in order to appeal to the Arthur Smith- Clayton McMitchen crowd who loved the radio style that was so much in vogue at that time. This might have helped make a little more money on the street. People have always liked to hear someone play and sound just like what they hear on the radio or a record. But I think if someone had asked Ed if he had done that consciously that he would have denied it and if he was in a bad mood they might have even had a fight on their hands. I keep having this idea of Ed imitating other instruments on the fiddle because I’ve tried it myself and wouldn’t it be something that some of these great parts was really an imitation of John Hager’s playing. I’d love to know where that passage is or whether it even exists. It’s obvious that when Ed had good firm second that wouldn’t slow down for anything, he really leaned back on the beat and got in that little pocket where so many great musicians like to be. Ella and Mona really held up a good solid beat, but I’ll bet Ed was hard on them — a real taskmaster. It’s all in that rhythm section. Wilson Douglas told me one time that Ed always told him to play it real lazy. Texas Shorty, Benny Martin, and Buddy Emmons refer to it as holding on to the note as long as you can before you start the next one. This is an important part of Ed’s feel and sound and it really comes through on the dining room recordings. I get it by playing as slow as I can against a beat I hope is not gonna move, and then I swing the notes with a dotted note feel — a real lilt if I can get it — and just drag on the beat as hard as I can ’cause I know it’s not gonna slow down. I’d love to know just when Ed figured that out or if it was always there. I always think of Ed in his younger years playing on top of the beat or even ahead of it like I did when I was young and full of piss and vinegar. Actually when you’re playing alone you do hafta pretty well stay on top of the beat to hold the time or at least set it, cause you are the beat but you have to keep from rushing which we will tend do when we get to hard passages in order to get them over with. We’ll not do that no more. Mark O’Connor told me one time that while he is playing a tune he’ll play on top of and behind the beat on purpose. He described playing behind it as letting the beat drag you along…almost like water skiing. Oh, to have known what Ed and John Hager or Bernie Adams sounded like together. I think Ed worked on his fiddling probably daily most of his life so it is fair to say that it was changing all the time. This would explain the varying descriptions of his playing that have come down. I’m sure they’re probably all accurate. Lawrence, Ugee, and Mona always said Ed played with great smooth long bow strokes and Snake Chapman always was adamant about him playing with short single strokes and Slim Clere said the same thing — that he bowed out everything — no bow slurs. Of course, in the dining room sessions you can hear both ways. It’s amazing how well Ed did without the feedback of working with a tape recorder. What an incredible ear he had. As far as I know, the only time he probably heard himself played back was the recordings we have. I hope there are others out there but I’ve come to doubt it. Brandon and I have always had a gut feeling that if we’d dug down into the hillside a little further at Milt and Green’s grave we might have found something. We only went down five feet and then we were defeated by the rain. What if we had gone down the requisite six feet? What if, like the probe, Owsley had misjudged the bottom of the grave shaft due to the mud and water? What if it hadn’t rained and muddied up the work area? If Melvin Kirk and Ben Walker went so far as to bury the men in a deep grave, why not assume they would have gone for the standard six feet grave traditionally dug? In the following weeks, old timers around Harts kept telling Brandon and Billy, “If they didn’t dig at least six feet, it’s no wonder they didn’t find anything.” We didn’t want to question the professionalism of experts like the Smithsonian forensic team or seem like we wanted to find Milt and Green so badly that we couldn’t accept the concept that they were gone…but what if? The explanation that Doug Owsley gave us about the coal seam and underground stream made a lot of sense. Needless to say we were really disappointed. I had started to rationalize that not finding anything might indicate that they were buried in the nude and just thrown in the hole with no box or winding sheet or anything. I was in Durham, North Carolina, the other day and I saw a fiddler on the street and I automatically found myself thinking of Ed. I didn’t have to fill in or rearrange much in my imagination to see him there playing on the street — even though this man was standing up, and played nothing like him. Of course when Ed was younger he probably stood up to play all the time like in the Webster Springs picture…dapper and wearing his derby. I always seem to picture Ed sitting down. Another great thrill for me is a young blind fiddler from Jeffersonville, Indiana, named Michael who when he plays I can see Ed at nineteen. He stands up so straight he almost looks like he’s gonna fall over backward the way Lawrence said his dad did. When he plays I can’t take my eyes off of him thinking of Ed. Now my friend Matt Combs, who has done a lot of the transcriptions for this book, sits with me and plays Ed’s notes off of the paper, and I play off the top of my head, so in that sense it’s like playing with him. I guess it’s time to just leave this alone and get back to my study of the fiddle. Maybe get geared up for “Volume Two.” I spend long hours here at the dining room table with my tape recorder and I can hear Lawrence and feel Ed as I try and play my way back into the past. I find that the study of Ed’s music leads me to the study of all music and the way it’s played. Haley-McCoy grave exhumation (1998) 25 Monday Aug 2014. Tags. Sometime during the next few months, we decided that the grave exhumation would take place on May 6, 1998. I rolled into the Harts Fas Chek parking lot on the 4th and hung out with Brandon and Billy until after midnight. Steve and David Haley showed up the next day, as did Jimmy and Bill McCoy and their families. It wasn’t long until Doug Owsley arrived with his crew. His team consisted of four people: Malcolm Richardson, (his former boss and) the field supervisor; John Imlay and Dale Brown, chief excavators; and Rebecca Redmond, recorder. Along to chronicle the event was Chip Clark, a professional photographer; Ted Timreck, a video documentary specialist from New York City; and Ted Park, a writer for Smithsonian magazine. I knew right away that these guys meant business. We all went up to the grave that evening, but “the dig” didn’t start until early the next morning. The weather was perfect and the hillside became alive with people. In addition to myself, the Haleys, the McCoys, Brandon, and Owsley’s crew, there was Billy Adkins, Lawrence Kirk, Bill and Cheryl Bryant (the property owners), and Lara Lamarre and Joanna Wilson of the State Historic Preservation Office. Most of the day was filled with probing, scraping, talking and then — well — more probing, scraping and talking. Within an hour, the diggers verified that it was a single-shaft grave. As the day progressed, it became obvious that the grave was deeper than the estimated two feet. Actually, it seemed to just keep “going,” causing us realize that the probes had been a bit deceiving. At some point, Owsley’s diggers bumped into a coal seam, which had a small underground stream beneath it. Rich said the stream was a bad find because it had probably deteriorated Milt and Green’s bodies in its seasonal cycle of drying up and trickling over the last hundred or so years. He still felt, however, that teeth and certain larger bones might be preserved. Just before nightfall, Rich said it would be best to stop working and cover the hole because it was supposed to rain sometime in the next few hours. Owsley mentioned that we were only inches away from the shaft floor… only inches — and he was sure of it this time . We were all too excited to go to bed, so we gathered around a big fire up by the grave. The Smithsonian folks requested that I play some fiddle tunes. I played “Brownlow’s Dream” and joked to Brandon that it might help “raise” Milt out of the ground. All jokes aside: it was a little spooky up there, in spite of the twenty or so people clustered around the fire. I remember shining my flashlight up the hill toward the grave every now and then just to make sure… After about a half an hour, rain began to sprinkle on our gathering. We filed off of the hill and settled in to bed in Harts. Brandon and three of his buddies pitched a tent near the grave and spent the night as “guards.” All were descendants of major participants in the 1889 feud: either mobsters or members of the burial party. The rain soon dissipated, creating a starry night, and left them gathered around a fire and talking about the feud that claimed the lives of Milt and Green. It was an incredible night of stories. So many things had come full circle. For Brandon, it was overwhelming to just think about how he had earlier stood at Milt’s and Green’s grave surrounded by many descendants of the feudists. Expectations and anticipation was at a high water mark. Such was the excitement that Brandon and his friends didn’t go to sleep until around 5 a.m. when a heavy rain forced them into their tent. Unfortunately, the rain came down in buckets during the early hours of the morning and created horrible working conditions for the forensic team. Their crude covering over the grave was no match for the rain, which whipped in from all angles. Most horribly, the rain caused the underground stream to gush forth and fill the bottom of the grave shaft completely. After only a few frustrating hours of digging through clay, mud, and several inches of water, Owsley concluded that the crew had reached the bottom of the grave. They had not located a single bone, tooth, belt buckle or bullet fragment. Even when Brandon fetched a cheap metal detector, the diggers couldn’t come up with anything.